


So what do I do with this?

by SurrealSupernaturalist



Series: The Scottish Safehouse Anthology [3]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Also: meet the other students!, Coasters - Freeform, Enemies to friends?, Enforced Friendship, Gen, Horror, Ko continues to not really give a fuck, M/M, POV Outsider, Paranormal, Post-MAG160, Set in Episodes 159-160 | Scottish Safehouse Period (The Magnus Archives), Teacher Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Technically?, The Lonely Fear Entity (The Magnus Archives), ambiguous timeline, but the good kind, spooky mugs, the paranormal has been henseforth been renamed 'the spooky'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:29:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28524738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SurrealSupernaturalist/pseuds/SurrealSupernaturalist
Summary: Ko digs another coaster out of her bag and places it on Mr. Sims' desk. He watches it for a moment before looking up at her silently.“Miss James?”It’s kind of adorable how confused he looks.“It’s for friends.” Is what she says instead, and refuses to elaborate.--------------------------------------OR: The lonely mug makes a friend or two.
Relationships: (martin isnt mentioned by name), Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Series: The Scottish Safehouse Anthology [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1970932
Comments: 36
Kudos: 166





	So what do I do with this?

**Author's Note:**

> lonely mug content lonely mug content  
> special shout-out to Tea, for planting this idea in my head. of course the mug gang would leave out coasters for lonely mug. just a lil parking spot.  
> I would suggest reading the first in this series to understand what's happening with the mugs! Otherwise you might be a little bit lost!  
> (title from Stray Italian Greyhound by Vienna Teng bc I love that song)

Ko sneaks into class well before anyone else arrives, the room silent and smelling slightly of stale air. She pauses to crack open a window before carrying on with her mission. 

Kit and Dian are off somewhere running interference. Mr Sims always turns up ten minutes before class without fail, and while her classmates might not debate her antics, their teacher certainly will. She cracks open his top desk drawer. 

Yeah, definitely.

The thing about Mr. Sims is that he’s always very particular about certain things. He turns up ten minutes early to every class on the dot. He keeps his whiteboard markers neatly lined up at the bottom of the board in rainbow order. He keeps dull white mugs in his top drawer, the kind you might find in a communal kitchenette. 

The nerdy part of her mind intones _‘the greater good’_ as she empties this drawer of its loot, and buries them at the bottom of her bag. She’ll return them, of course. They’re not intended for her collection, and they certainly don’t belong to her. But, well, it's for the greater good.

She rummages around for a moment before fishing out a thick wooden coaster and placing it gently on his desk, the finishing touch.

Mr. Sims walks into the classroom with her best friends in tow to find Ko sitting primly at her desk, entirely the picture of innocence. Which is, of course, immediately suspicious, but that’s neither here nor there.

He narrows his eyes at her. She grins back. Kit and Dian slide into their seats and the rest of the class starts filing in.

Everything goes normally for the following hour they have together. Dian dozes off about halfway through, tape recorder humming gently in the background. Zuri and Alex have another debate about the supernatural, which is so far par for the course that Mr. Sims doesn’t even blink when Zuri shoves the textbook under the nose of the other insisting upon the inaccuracies, and instead calmly and firmly shuts them all up by the situation to remind them all about the importance of fact checking and research. The endless amounts of patience that Mr. Sims has for their class and in turning their shenaniganery into something at the very least resembling a lesson impresses Ko every single time. Zuri sits down looking self-satisfied but ultimately humbled.

Alex sticks their tongue out at her. Zuri throws the book at them.

The end of class comes and there’s a steaming mug of tea sitting on the coaster Ko had placed. 

Mr. Sims looks at it. Then he looks at the three of them, sitting all and acting for all the world like they didn’t plan this. He looks back at the mug.

“That wasn’t there before.” He says.

Ko only hums in response.

Mr. Sims likes to take a tea break after class ends, they’ve discovered. He ignores it and opens his top desk drawer. Then he closes it and frowns at them.

“Where are my mugs?” It’s tinged with suspicion and something else that Ko can’t put her finger on, but she still doesn’t reply. She has to pack up for their next class, after all.

“Are you sure it’s not right there?” Kit asks instead, nodding in the direction of their little friend. It steams happily.

Mr. Sims squints at it like it personally offends him.

“Quite sure.”

A tense silence follows as they finish packing away their books and move to their next class. Ko glances behind her as they leave to see their teacher pursing his lips and staring intently at the mug. She blinks, and it’s gone.

Well. There’s always next time.

\---

Next time sees Mr. Sims prepared with a cuppa in a travel cup with a little stylised picture of a highland cow. Ko blinks. She hadn’t considered that he would adapt. 

Nothing for it, then.

Mr. Sims uses the coaster she placed there last time, so she digs another out of her bag and places it on his desk. He watches it for a moment before looking up at her silently.

“Miss James?” 

It’s kind of adorable how confused he looks.

“It’s for friends.” Is what she says instead, and refuses to elaborate as Mr. Sims grows more and more desperate for an explanation. Dian nearly dies from keeping her laughter in, half under the desk as she is.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this.” She wheezes out eventually, halfway through class. “He’s so confused, gods, his _face_.”

“Spooky mugs deserve friends too.” Ko replies primly. “And I’ll eat my shorts if Mr. Sims isn’t familiar with the spooky.”

“I’m not familiar with ‘the spooky’.” The man in question says stiffly from the front of the classroom. He says it with disdain and with contempt, but well-worn in the way words are when you retread an old argument. 

“Sir, you teach paranormal sciences.” Ko replies. Dian snorts inelegantly. Kit buries his face in his hands and pretends he isn’t enjoying this.

“The very serious field of parascience who? I only know the spooky.” Alex jokes, leaning forward on their elbows and grinning widely. In front of them, Zuri bangs her head on her desk in defeat.

“Please.” She moans. “Please don’t let this be a thing.”

“The votes are in, folks! Can I get a drumroll?” Ko and Kit start drumming on their desks with their pens, and Duke joins in from the back half-heartedly. Alex dramatically mimes opening a letter and gasps, their delight obvious. “The verdict is clear! Paranormal science will henceforth be known as the spooky!”

Cheers ring out around the classroom. Zuri resigns herself to her fate.

At the front, Mr. Sims pinches the bridge of his nose, pushing up his grandma glasses in the process. He sighs deeply. This is definitely an old argument.

“‘The spooky’ is not an apt description of the field, nor does it imply any sort of respectable academia.” There’s an air of resignation to his tone. “It’s difficult enough for paranormal science to gain any amount of credibility, calling it things like ‘spooky’ and ‘freaky’ doesn’t help matters. It’s things like this that means that people in this field of work aren’t taken seriously.”

“I don’t think being a ponce and taking yourself overly seriously helps, either.” Alex points out, but they look to be considering Mr. Sims’ words anyway. Their teacher huffs what could be considered, _holy shit on a stick, Batman_ , a laugh.

“That is also true. But, _well_ , that’s academia for you.”

He says it like he speaks from bitter experience, and from the way all the eyes in the room perk up in interest, Ko thinks that she’s not the only one who picked up on that. Hidden backstory, anyone?

But before anyone can ask, Mr. Sims’ attention is diverted by the charming blue mug sitting on his desk. It’s empty this time, presumably because the peace offering of the other day went unappreciated. 

He stares at it for a long moment. The mug sits there innocently on the second coaster. The class watches with baited breath.

“I don’t want you in my classroom.” He says to it, which is uncalled for, in Ko’s humble opinion. The mug doesn’t reply, for it is a mug and cannot speak. Mr. Sims frowns, and it’s only now that Ko realises that he hasn’t been blinking, because he does so.

She looks down. She’s holding it. She cuddles it to her chest, pushing past that now-familiar burn of grief at the back of her throat, and scowls at her teacher for being so rude.

“Spooky mugs deserve friends too.” She repeats firmly. “You wouldn’t want it to be lonely, do you?”

Mr. Sims jerks back as if slapped and mumbles something unintelligible. 

“I’M SORRY DID THAT MUG JUST TELEPORT?” Alex cries, leaping up from their seat, eyes wide like saucers. 

“Maybe so.” Dian’s voice is muffled by the desk she’s currently lying face-down on, but she’s lucid, at least. Her tape recorder whirls gently. Zuri is unconvinced.

“You weren’t looking at it.” Her tone is matter-of-fact, even in the face of genuine paranormal activity. “You have no idea how it got there.”

“It _teleported_!”

“Or Mr. Sims just gave it to her. It’s a _mug_ , Alex.”

“It’s a _spooky mug_.”

“It is indeed a spooky mug,” Kit interjects, twirling a pen in one hand and resting his chin in the other, “one that just wants to sit and listen to the lecture. Speaking of…?” Eyebrows raised behind square glasses, he gestures at Mr. Sims, who is once again watching the mug with an expression of incredulity. He blinks, genuine bafflement crossing his face as he’s shaken from his staring contest with an inanimate object, before it’s replaced with his usual professional scowl.

Hm.

As their teacher continues with his spiel about the origins of demonology (and why it’s complete garbage), Ko takes a third coaster out of her bag and places it on the desk in front of her, gently placing their strange friend on top.

By the time Alex corners the three of them in the hall later that day, it’s already long gone.

Ko has never claimed to have control over her mugs. The only thing she sets out to do is to collect, and to look after her collection. What they may or may not do away from her oversight is none of her business, provided they’re not hurting anyone.

This one just likes to listen. It likes to observe, and vibe, and simply bask in the presence of other people. It’s also shy. Extremely so, and Ko is confident that it will not take well to Alex’s attempts to record it for their amateur show.

But it does seem to crave companionship. It listens to Kit’s prose, and brings Dian coffee, and follows Ko around the house. It never demands attention. It just… wants to be present. 

Ko thinks that’s not too much to want.

\---

“Your mug is stalking my boyfriend.”

Ko looks up from where she’s packing away her things, the bottom of her bag still filled with illicit (ordinary) mugs. Her teacher stands over her, somehow towering despite his meager height, though that's probably because she’s sitting. She hums a question.

He looks unsure. Their usually stern teacher shifts on his feet and fiddles with the hem of his cardigan, but his eyes are locked on Ko. It makes her feel seen, uncomfortably so, but after a month and a half of being in his class and a few years more than that of collecting weird things, she shrugs off the feeling.

“Your, uh, mug started appearing at our house.” He explains haltingly, all sense of professionalism melting away. For all the attention he commands in his rants and lectures, the man seems to dissolve completely in the face of proper human interaction. “I can’t— it won’t leave. And it’s, ah, weirdly attached to my boyfriend. It won’t leave him alone, and I— you know what it is, yes?”

“More or less.” She finds herself answering. “I know it’s paranormal, but I don’t know where it came from.”

Her classmates have gone to lunch, and Dian and Kit hover at the door, waiting for her. She waves them off. Mr. Sims raises his eyebrows, blinking in a rare look of bafflement.

“You don’t?”

“Nope.” Ko replies, popping the ‘p’. “It just turned up one day.”

Mr. Sims pauses for a second, computing that statement.

“Could you, perhaps, um, ‘call it off’?” Ko replies with a look of bewilderment and he hastily clarifies. “It’s not that we mind it, but we— we have a rule against paranormal entities in the house. I would appreciate it if you could make it stop?”

“Ohhhh. Yeah, I can’t help you there.” She shrugs. “How can you control something that appears between one moment and the next and then leave in the same manner? I’m not a fool, Mr. Sims.”

“But you allow it to follow you around.”

“It’s not doing any harm.”

“It causes you grief and loss and loneliness.”

“Because that’s what it’s feeling.” 

As she says it, she knows it’s true. Realistically speaking, it shouldn’t. It’s a mug, an inanimate object that yes, moves around freely, but it has preferences. It has things that it likes to do and things that it doesn’t. 

They forget it exists when it disappears. When it returns, it makes them feel everything that it feels.

It just wants a friend.

Mr. Sims stares at her for a long, long moment. She stares back, because what else can she do? 

“Do you understand how dangerous this is?”

Ko thinks of the bloody mugs buried in her wardrobe, the ones that rend flesh from bone and twist minds into spiraling cacophonies of colour and sound, the ones that pull you into the depths and that pull the depths into you. The ones that burn and the ones that rot and the ones that change.

“Yes.” Her voice is firm, even. “I do.”

Mr. Sims continues to stare, but it’s somehow less, this time. Just… considering.

Then he sighs. “How do I appease it?” He asks wearily.

Ko hands her teacher a fourth coaster.

“It likes having its own spot.” She explains. “And it’ll stay put longer if it’s doing something it likes.”

He looks down at the round wooden thing in his hand, brows furrowed.

She continues. “It hates black tea, even if you add milk. Hot chocolate is its favourite, but it’ll take coffee as well. It likes to listen, so if you’re talking to yourself, or watching a movie, or something like that, it’ll probably come and join. Mostly, though, it’ll just follow you around like a lost puppy... I think it just wants the company.” She adds, almost as an afterthought. “Just a friend, someone to be there.”

She knows this already. Mr. Sims doesn’t. 

He nods slowly, and then raises his gaze to meet hers. She meets it as firmly as she can.

“Thank you.” He says eventually, and Ko takes that as a dismissal. She nods, smiles, and retreats out of the classroom with her bag slung over her shoulder. Dian and Kit meet her at the end of the hall.

“How’d it go?” Dian asks, yawning wide.

Ko looks over at the little blue mug, sitting happily on a windowsill. 

“I think you’ve made a couple more friends.” She says to it with a smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Listen. Lonely mug is still an artefact made by fear entities and absolutely has ulterior motives that involve your typical fear-consumption. But we tamed predators and parent cacti and name giant fuck-off vehicles. The human ability to packbond with things that are bad for our health is infallible. I refuse to believe that lonely mug would be an exception.  
> Be sure to leave a comment, I love hearing what people think 👀👀 and subscribe to the series to see more!!


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